Proctor, an MP from 1979 to 1987, says a man named ‘Nick’ has made ‘totally untrue’ claims he raped, strangled or stabbed two children at sex parties and aided someone else to kill another.

Today he accused the Met Police of a ‘gay witch hunt’ and said: ‘I am a homosexual. I am not a murderer, a paedophile or a pederast’.

Speaking at a press conference in central London today, Mr Proctor laid out graphic details of allegations made against him and warned: ‘Anyone of a delicate or nervous disposition should leave the room’.

He said: ‘They amount to just about the worst allegations anyone can make against a person, including the multiple murder of children, their torture, grievous bodily harm, rape and sexual child abuse.

‘I’m completely innocent of all these allegations. This whole catalogue of events has wrecked my life.’

He has been interviewed as part of Operation Midland, which is investigating allegations of abuse in flats at Dolphin Square or the Elm Guest House for vulnerable children in south-west London.

He added: ‘I am sorry to have to disappoint the fantasists on the Internet, but I did not visit the Elm Guest House’, blaming police for being ‘egged on by motley crew of some press, some MPs and ragbag of Internet activists’.

Message: Proctor, who appeared on the verge of tears throughout his speech, said that the ‘false’ allegations had ‘ruined’ his life

Mr Proctor said he did not attend ‘sex parties’ at apartments in Dolphin Square (pictured) near Parliament and claimed to be trapped in a ‘Kafkaesque fantasy’

In a room packed with media, the 69-year-old said the complainant, ‘Nick’, had stated he was ‘the victim of systematic and serious sexual abuse’ by a group of adult men over a period between 1975 to 1984.

Reading from a police disclosure form, the former MP said: ‘Nick provided names of several individuals involved in these acts including Mr Harvey Proctor.

‘He states Mr Proctor abused him on a number of occasions which included sexual assault, buggery and torturous assault.

‘He also states Mr Proctor was present when he was assaulted by other adult males.

This has wrecked my life

‘Furthermore Nick states he witnessed the murder of three young boys on separate occasions.

‘He states Mr Proctor was directly responsible for two of the allegations and implicated in the third.’

Mr Proctor said one of the claims was that he threatened to castrate a boy with a penknife but was persuaded not to by another man, whom it was suggested was former Prime Minister Edward Heath.

Mr Proctor said he also did not recognise either of the two e-fit images of the boys he is alleged to have murdered, which were created with the help of Nick.

He said the head of Operation Midland, Detective Superintendent Kenny McDonald, should resign and called on Met commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe to apologise for pursuing ‘ludicrous allegations’.

Mr Proctor said: ‘I should be arrested, charged and prosecuted for murder and these awful crimes immediately so I can start the process of ridiculing these preposterous allegations in open court.

‘Nick’ should be stripped of his anonymity and prosecuted for wasting police time and money.

‘The paranoid police have pursued a homosexual witch hunt on this issue egged on by a motley crew of certain sections of the media and press and a number of Labour Members of Parliament and a ragbag of internet fantasists.’

Harvey Proctor was interviewed under caution by Metropolitan Police officers working on Operation Midland, the inquiry launched following allegations of a VIP paedophile ring.

Mr Proctor’s home within the grounds of Belvoir Castle (pictured) in Leicestershire was searched by officers in March

He was not arrested and will not be subject to any police bail conditions, Scotland Yard said.

His home within the grounds of Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire was searched by officers in March. He was interviewed under caution for the first time in June.

Mr Proctor previously said he felt ‘disbelief and disgust’ at what he described as ‘the growing paranoia among various police ‘organisations” in relation to such investigations.

He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Speaking after his home was searched he denied being part of a ‘rent boy ring’ or attending sex parties with other prominent figures.

The 68-year-old left Parliament in 1987 after pleading guilty to acts of gross indecency related to ‘spanking sessions’ with rent boys.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman did not identify Mr Proctor.

He said: ‘A man in his 60s, from Grantham, was interviewed under caution after attending a local police station by appointment at 1100 on Monday August 24 2015. He was not arrested.

‘He was interviewed by Metropolitan Police Service officers working on Operation Midland.

‘He left the police station at 1330. He will not be subject to any police bail conditions. We are not prepared to discuss further.’

Operation Midland was launched by the Met last November following allegations that boys were sexually abused by a VIP paedophile ring centred around Westminster more than 30 years ago.

There were claims that sex parties involving boys below the age of consent were held at the exclusive Dolphin Square apartment block near the Houses of Parliament.

THE SPANKING SCANDAL THAT COST PROCTOR HIS SEAT IN PARLIAMENT

The 68-year-old quit Parliament in 1987 after admitting ‘spanking sessions’ with rent boys

Harvey Proctor had been a respected member of Parliament for both Basildon, from 1979 to 1983, and Billericay, from 1983 to 1987, until he became embroiled in a scandal involving male prostitutes which ended his parliamentary career.

In 1986, a newspaper broke the story of his involvement in spanking parties with teenage rent boys – at a time when consent for same-sex relationships was 21.

The following year he pleaded guilty to charges of gross indecency after repeated public denials that he had done anything wrong.

As for his politics, his views on immigration were considered so extreme he became the focus of several targeted attacks.

Within weeks of being elected he was irritating then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the Tory high command with his strident views on migration, backing a motion calling for a ban on immigration from Commonwealth countries.

Urging the abolition of the Commission for Racial Equality, he demanded the forcible repatriation of 50,000 ‘coloured’ immigrants a year, proposing a £7,000 payment to encourage them to go.

He was also one of seven Tory MPs who rebelled against legislation allowing parents to exempt their children from corporal punishment in schools.

And he attempted to halt the growing tide of political correctness by launching a campaign to save the golliwog.

At the University of York he had gained notoriety as chairman of the Conservative association when he invited Enoch Powell, who had been sacked from the Conservative shadow cabinet after his ‘rivers of blood’ speech on immigration, to make a keynote address.

By the time he became MP for Basildon in 1979, he was already a leading figure in the notorious Monday Club, a lobby group for the Conservatives but considered so extreme that in 2001 the party severed all links with it.

The group advocated voluntary or assisted repatriation for non-white immigrants, capital punishment, and denounced Nelson Mandela as a criminal and terrorist who deserved to be locked up.

Basildon Council later passed a motion of no confidence in Proctor as MP over his views on race.

He was then selected for the safe neighbouring seat of Billericay, which he won convincingly at the 1983 election.

Proctor was open about his sexuality with his political friends, while most of his Tory followers were oblivious.

But the ambitious former grammar school boy’s glittering political career lay in pieces after news began to emerge of his sexual activities.

Proctor resigned after he was charged over spanking parties with teenage rent boys at his flat and lost his house and flat, before signing on the dole

The first story to emerge was in 1981, when Proctor locked his boyfriend Terry Woods, a flamboyant art dealer, out of their flat. The row eventually led to a court appearance where Woods claimed he was in a relationship with the Mp- something Proctor strongly denied.

Lurid allegations surfaced in a Sunday newspaper in September 1986 claiming he had organised gay spanking sessions with canes and teenage rent boys in his flat – allegations he dismissed as monstrous.

But soon after Woods was found in his underpants by the police outside the MP’s apartment. He admitted that he ‘loved’ Proctor but insisted the relationship was not sexual.

Days later a story emerged of how a naked Arab boy had been found under Proctor’s hotel bed on a Tunisian holiday.

When police eventually charged him over the teenage rent boys in his flat, Proctor bowed to the inevitable and announced he was standing down as an MP, admitting to a charge of gross indecency and accepting a fine of £1,450.

The scandal ruined Proctor who was forced to sell his house in the constituency, his flat in London and went on the dole for a year.

But with the help of a £2,000 government grant and friends – including Jeffrey Archer, Michael Heseltine and other MPs who between them raised £75,000 on his behalf – he turned from politics to hosiery, opening a shop, Proctor’s, in Richmond selling shirts, gaudy waistcoats, silk ties, and natty cuff links.

However, in 1992, he was subjected to a homophobic attack by two men who demanded whether he had ‘any boys for tying up before you spank them’ before throwing punches at him.

The incident was to start a slow decline in his business which was eventually forced into liquidation in 2000.

Proctor disappeared beneath the public radar, until landing a job as events manager in 2004 at the Duke of Rutland’s ancestral seat, the gothic Belvoir Castle where he lives on the grounds in a large country home.

On 5 March 2015, Proctor’s home was searched by the Metropolitan Police as part of their investigation into allegations of historical child sexual abuse.

Operation Midland was launched by the Met last November following allegations that boys were sexually abused by a VIP paedophile ring centred around Westminster more than 30 years ago.

Proctor denied any wrongdoing but retired from his job with the Duke and Duchess of Rutland later that month.

He was questioned by the police regarding the allegations in June and again in August.

The probe into an alleged paedophile network at the heart of the British Establishment took an explosive turn last night with the revelation that Enoch Powell’s name has been passed to police.

The Mail on Sunday can reveal that the late Tory MP, one of the most prominent and divisive politicians of the 20th Century, has been named to Scotland Yard by the Bishop of Durham. The claims relate to ‘ritual satanic abuse’.

And in a further development to the sex-ring investigations, police are to be given access to secret files held on MPs in the House of Commons archives as they hunt for evidence on suspected abusers, including former Liberal MP Cyril Smith.

Historic: Enoch Powell’s name was first linked to sex abuse claims in the 1980s

The Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, contacted police after Powell’s name was passed to him by a former Bishop of Monmouth, Dominic Walker, who first heard the allegation when he was a vicar counselling young adults in the 1980s.

The claim is being examined by Operation Fenbridge, one of a number of police probes into ‘Establishment paedophile rings’ – including an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission into claims that officers dropped their inquiries under pressure from powerful individuals.

A Church of England spokesman said: ‘The name of Enoch Powell was passed to Operation Fenbridge by one of our safeguarding team on the instruction of Bishop Paul Butler.’

Mr Walker is believed to have warned the Right Rev Butler that at the time he was told of the claims against Powell, unsubstantiated allegations of satanic rituals – often involving the abuse of children – were widespread.

In 1994, an investigation by the London School of Economics into 84 alleged cases of ‘satanic abuse’ in the UK between 1987 and 1992, including notorious cases in Rochdale and the Orkneys that involved social workers and police forcibly removing children from their homes in dawn raids, found no convincing corroborative evidence.

Report: Paul Butler, the Bishop of Durham, passed the name to Scotland Yard after hearing it from the former Bishop of Monmouth

However, the ongoing scandal over how serial paedophile Jimmy Savile was able to evade detection for decades has led institutions to take a safety-first approach, so the Church felt it had no option but to pass on the information to police.

Enoch Powell’s frontline political career ended abruptly in 1968 after he made his infamous ‘rivers of blood’ speech warning about the dangers of uncontrolled immigration.

Tory leader Edward Heath sacked him from the Shadow Cabinet the following day, although Powell remained an MP until 1974.

Shortly after he died in 1998, aged 85, it was revealed he had admitted to a friend, Canon Eric James, that love poetry he had written as a youth had been intended for a man – but that he did not want the fact revealed while he was alive.

Although Powell became a hero of the Right, his intellectual and oratorical skills earned him admirers on both sides of the political divide. A devout member of the Church of England, he had two daughters with his wife Pamela.

Sources close to one of Scotland Yard’s sex-ring investigations say officers contacted Lawrence Ward, the Commons Serjeant at Arms – the Commons’ most senior security official – earlier this month to ask him to search the files kept on all MPs. It is understood that no information was uncovered implicating MPs in abuse, sparking fears at Scotland Yard that some of the evidence might have been shredded.

Now Mr Ward is believed to have told officers that, if they produce a warrant, they can enter the Commons to investigate the files themselves on a ‘case by case basis’.

Last night, Simon Heffer, Powell’s official biographer and former confidante, branded the allegations ‘absolute nonsense’ and without foundation.

Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor is expected to be interviewed for a second time today by detectives investigating claims of a VIP paedophile ring.

He was interviewed under police caution in March over claims he was present when underage boys were abused and murdered at Westminster ‘sex parties’.

The 68-year-old, who quit Parliament in 1987 after admitting ‘spanking sessions’ with rent boys, vigorously denied any knowledge of the abuse and deaths of three young boys.

He said he did not attend ‘sex parties’ at apartments in Dolphin Square near Parliament and claimed to be trapped in a ‘Kafkaesque fantasy’.

However, detectives from Operation Midland – which was set up to examine claims of systematic child abuse by a Westminster paedophile ring operating in the 1970s and 1980s – are set to grill him for a second time today.

The former Essex MP is angered by the continuing insinuations against him and is planning to release a lengthy statement at a press conference tomorrow.

The statement is expected to list the allegations, reiterate his firm denials and tell how he believes those wrongly accused of abuse can be protected by the law.

‘If someone faces allegations, of course the police should investigate,’ he told The Independent on Sunday.

‘But they have to produce some evidence. When people hear what has been claimed about what I am supposed to have done, they will find it both astonishing, totally far-fetched and hair-raising.

‘The police of course have an obligation to look into any claims, particularly given previous shortcomings. On Tuesday I will be open, frank and honest.’

Mr Proctor says his statement will be critical of the weight apparently attached to the evidence of a particular witness.

Mr Proctor said he did not attend ‘sex parties’ at apartments in Dolphin Square (pictured) near Parliament and claimed to be trapped in a ‘Kafkaesque fantasy’

He was first questioned after Scotland Yard officers spent two days searching his grace-and-favour home at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire in March.

Mr Proctor quickly proclaimed his innocence, denying any knowledge of abuse or murders.

Standing in the grounds of Belvoir Castle, he said he was ‘helping police with their inquiries’. At no stage has he been arrested.

Mr Proctor, who represented Basildon and nearby Billericay, was an outspoken hard-right Tory but left Parliament after pleading guilty to gross indecency.

The MP – who was given the nickname ‘Wacko’ – would order rent boys as young as 17 to call him ‘Sir’ or ‘Keith’ and pretend he was a headmaster as he caned them.

He was fined just £1,450 but the case signalled the end of his career because his confession followed years of vehement denials.

The 68-year-old quit Parliament in 1987 after admitting ‘spanking sessions’ with rent boys

Two months before his court appearance it was revealed how Mr Proctor was caught by security staff on holiday in Morocco with a naked 15-year-old local boy hiding under his bed.

He later went to work for the Duke of Rutland as his private secretary and in recent years has been responsible for ‘public and park events’.

The 1987 offences would no longer be crimes under current laws after the age of consent for homosexual activity changed from 21 to 16.

A friend of Mr Proctor’s who has seen a draft of his statement said last night: ‘I think people will find what he has to say is very powerful. People will wonder how anyone can begin to believe this stuff.

‘I think people will find it hair-raising that things can have got so far. He will be frank and forthright, but his statement won’t just reflect his anger, although there is plenty he could complain about.

‘He has thought long and hard about all this and the injustice that has faced so many of the accused, and is seeking to be constructive.

‘I think people will be genuinely horrified. He certainly doesn’t want to diminish the terrible things done to abused children, but what he was convicted of has nothing to do with that. I’m afraid the police will have questions to answer.’

Two Tory Ministers were named in a damning 1980s paedophile dossier

Sir Keith Joseph and Sir Rhodes Boyson were cited in the “VIP” paedophile document drawn up by Labour’s Barbara Castle

Named: Sir Keith Joseph and Rhodes Boyson

Two senior ministers in the Thatcher government exposed by the Sunday Mirror last week for indulging in sex parties with underage rent boys were named in a damning paedophile dossier compiled in the 1980s.

Sir Keith Joseph and Sir Rhodes Boyson were cited in the “VIP” paedophile document drawn up by Labour’s Barbara Castle. Other MPs, senior policemen, head teachers and clergy were also named.

And today we can also reveal disgraced former Tory MP Harvey Proctor has been named by witnesses in connection with sex parties and faces being questioned by a Government inquiry.

At least two alleged witnesses have also named former Tory MP Proctor, 67, as being at parties in statements for the inquiry.

He was exposed in 1986 for arranging sordid spanking sessions with young men and was found to be leading a double life and living with an 18-year-old male prostitute at a time when the legal age of consent was 21.

A court later heard how the pair had a bust-up when the relationship ended.

A source close to the inquiry told the Sunday Mirror: “Proctor’s name has repeatedly been mentioned by at least two alleged victims. He is going to be of key interest.”

Approached for comment last week, Proctor, former MP for Basildon and Billericay, said he was unable to comment because of a gagging agreement he claims to have signed years ago.

After Baroness Castle collated her file, she handed it to Don Hale, then the respected editor of her local newspaper, the Bury Messenger.

Mr Hale, who had read the contents, claimed a “heavy mob” of Special Branch officers then raided his office and confiscated it a day after paedophile Liberal MP Cyril Smith visited him to demand that he bury the story.

The knock on the door came early one day in the famously dry summer of 1984. It was just after 8 am, and Don Hale, the young editor of the Bury Messenger, was reading the daily papers at his desk as his reporters were beginning to arrive at the office.

As Hale, then 31, answered the door, a trio of plain-clothes detectives barged in, followed by a dozen police officers in uniform.

What happened next was, in Hale’s words, ‘like something out of totalitarian East Germany rather than Margaret Thatcher’s supposedly free Britain’.

The detectives identified themselves as Special Branch, the division of the police responsible for matters of national security.

‘They began to flash warrant cards and bark questions,’ says Hale. ‘It was as if they were interviewing a potential criminal rather than a law-abiding newspaper man.

‘The officers told me that I should abandon plans to print a story that was scheduled to run in our next edition. If I didn’t, they told me to expect a long jail sentence.’

Initially bewildered by their threatening tone, Hale soon worked out the purpose of the police visit.

The focus of their attention was an incendiary dossier he had been handed a few days earlier by long-serving Labour politician Barbara Castle. A powerful feminist and stalwart of the traditional Left, who served in Harold Wilson’s Cabinet, she was for years the MP for nearby Blackburn.

One of her lifelong interests, as a principled advocate for the vulnerable and powerless, was child protection. To that end, she had become concerned at the rising influence of the paedophile lobby, which was then infiltrating the political Establishment, developing links with senior public figures, including MPs, peers, civil servants and police officers.

Mrs Castle was particularly alarmed, Hale recalls, about the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), which had become officially ‘affiliated’ with the influential National Council for Civil Liberties, run by future Labour frontbenchers Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt and Jack Dromey.

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Journalist Don Hale, the young editor of the Bury Messenger in 1984, was silenced by an official government order. Ms Castle had given him documents which included minutes of meetings held in Westminster in support of the paedophile agenda

‘To her frustration, politicians seemed unwilling to discuss this important issue,’ says Hale. ‘So, being aware of my investigative work in the local media, she approached me and we agreed to a meeting.’

Over tea and a bun at a local cafe, Mrs Castle opened a battered briefcase and handed Hale a bundle of extraordinary documents. They included typewritten minutes of meetings that had been held at Westminster in support of the paedophile agenda, along with details of a host of Establishment figures who had apparently pledged support to their cause.

No fewer than 16 MPs were on that list, several of them household names. Also mentioned multiple times was Tory minister Sir Rhodes Boyson, a well-known enthusiast for corporal punishment, and Education Secretary Sir Keith Joseph.

‘I don’t suppose you’d be interested in writing a story on this,’ Mrs Castle asked in what Hale describes as a tone of weariness.

‘She perked up when I told her that yes, I would be interested,’ he says, ‘though I warned her that I would have to make inquiries with the authorities about some contents of the dossier.’

Accordingly, a few days later he put in a call to the Home Office.

‘I could detect the antagonism from officials as soon as they answered,’ he says. ‘The institution that should have been protecting vulnerable children seemed more interested in stopping the Press from prying too closely.’

It was the morning after Hale made his call to the Home Office that Special Branch officers turned up at the Bury Messenger.

Pushing him into a corner, they began barking orders.

‘Let me assure you that this story is not in the public interest,’ said a detective. ‘It cannot be printed, as a matter of national security.’

‘That can’t be right,’ Hale told him.

‘Look, we’re not here to argue,’ the detective responded. ‘Are you going to hand over your papers?’

‘No,’ Hale replied.

Sir Rhodes Boyson (left) was mentioned multiple times in Mrs Castle’s dossier; while Sir Keith Joseph (right) was also named in her files

At this point, the officer produced a document, signed by a judge. It showed that his previous remark about not printing the story had not been a request, but an order. The document handed to Hale was a D-notice — a relic of wartime censorship that could be served on newspaper editors, allowing the Government to block any story that threatened national security.

‘If you don’t comply with this notice, we will arrest you for perverting the course of justice,’ the detective barked. ‘You will be liable for up to ten years in prison.’

At this point, Hale’s resistance collapsed. He had been plunged into a situation for which he had little experience.

In his first editorship and married with two children, he says he couldn’t afford to casually put his family and career at risk.

The papers from Mrs Castle were swiftly confiscated, as were Hale’s notes and even his typewriter.

‘When I asked the reason for this strange act of expropriation, I was told it was being taken in case of allegations of fraud,’ he says.

‘You might have typed these statements yourself,’ said a detective, referring to minutes of paedophile campaign meetings. As the police left, Hale was warned never to write about the raid or tell anyone what had happened.

If you don’t comply with this notice, we will arrest you for perverting the course of justice

Officer to Mr Hale during raid at his newspaper office

‘One point I found interesting was that they all spoke with London accents,’ says Hale. ‘Not a single man was from Lancashire. It was obvious this was a Metropolitan Police raid, planned in the capital.

‘This was confirmed when, disobeying Special Branch’s instructions, I phoned Bury police about the incident. They knew nothing of it and were astonished.’

Rather less shocked was Barbara Castle. When Hale saw her a few days later, she told him: ‘I thought this might happen.’

‘I wish you’d told me,’ he replied. ‘I was totally unprepared. If I’d known, I might have been more discreet in my inquiries to the Home Office or been able to hide some of the papers.’ Mrs Castle apologised. ‘Well, this certainly shows the extent of the cover-up,’ she said. ‘We are fighting a formidable foe.’

Sadly, it wasn’t a foe that Barbara Castle would live to see defeated. Thanks to the D-notice, Hale never made further inquiries or made public the contents of the dossier. Castle went to her grave in 2002 with its contents still secret.

She wasn’t the only one. In a scandal that has gripped Westminster, we recently learned that a similar dossier was handed to then Home Secretary Leon Brittan in 1983 by the late Tory MP Geoffrey Dickens.

Lord Brittan says he passed on that dossier to civil servants and prosecutors. But its contents seem never to have been properly acted on.

Last week, the Home Office was forced to admit it is one of no fewer than 114 files relating to the paedophile lobby and PIE that are ‘missing’, presumed destroyed.

Amid growing public disquiet, two public inquiries will now attempt to establish what happened. The first, by NSPCC head Peter Wanless, will focus on how the Home Office handled recent allegations of child abuse in the early Eighties. It will report in nine weeks.

Another investigation into the handling of child-abuse allegations by a range of public institutions, including schools, care homes and the Church, will last much longer. It is seeking a chairman, following this week’s resignation of the initial appointee, Baroness Butler-Sloss.

Against this backdrop, Hale’s decision to reveal what happened in his office in 1984 carries huge significance, on a number of levels.

Take, for example, his revelation about the role of Special Branch in shutting down his coverage of Establishment links to paedophiles.

It comes just a week after Tim Hulbert, a former Home Office employee, revealed that in 1979 he had been told to wave through the renewal of a £30,000 grant for PIE.

Hulbert says his boss Clifford Hindley — a suspected paedophile — claimed ‘PIE was being funded at the request of Special Branch, who found it politically useful to keep an eye on paedophiles.’ If that isn’t coincidence enough, take also Hale’s revelation that two prominent Tories, Sir Rhodes Boyson and Sir Keith Joseph, were named in Castle’s dossier.

This week, a former Tory activist called Anthony Gilberthorpe told a Sunday newspaper that he had been asked to procure under-age boys for drink and drug-fuelled ‘sex parties’ at political party conferences in the early Eighties.

And who were the two most senior figures Gilberthorpe named as being present at the debauched events? None other than Sir Keith Joseph and Sir Rhodes Boyson.

While neither man is alive to defend themselves, and should, of course, be considered innocent until comprehensively proven guilty, this does, at the very least, appear uncanny.

A third extraordinary coincidence concerns an event that occurred a few days after Hale’s visit from Special Branch.

When he first read Mrs Castle’s dossier, he had noticed that some of those named as parliamentary supporters of the paedophile lobby were Liberals. With this in mind, he’d contacted Jeremy Thorpe, the former party leader who, despite his retirement from front-line politics, remained a national figure.

‘Over the phone, Thorpe told me he would send someone from the party to discuss the matter with me in person at my Bury office,’ says Hale. And who should appear soon after but Cyril Smith, the apparently genial MP for Rochdale.

We now know, thanks to heroic investigations by the present Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk, serialised by this newspaper, that Cyril Smith was a predatory paedophile who ruthlessly exploited his status to exploit vulnerable boys.

At the time, however, Hale was totally unaware of Smith’s sordid private life, and his name didn’t feature in Castle’s documents.

‘Perhaps my suspicions should have been raised by his dismissal of Barbara’s dossier when we met,’ he says. ‘It was all “poppycock”, Smith claimed, a result of Barbara “getting her knickers in a twist” because she was bored with her position as an MEP in Brussels.

‘Downplaying the whole business, Smith sought an assurance that I would not run any story about the dossier. When I refused, he left in a disappointed mood, and I continued my ill-fated investigation.’

We now know, of course, that Cyril Smith spent his life using friends within the Establishment to cover up paedophile activities.

And the organisation which, more than any other, presided over shoddy cover-ups on his behalf was, once again, Special Branch.

As Danczuk has revealed, a Lancashire police dossier on Smith containing credible allegations of abuse disappeared in the Seventies after being commandeered by Special Branch, who then demanded that local detectives stop investigating him.

Officers in Northamptonshire were instructed (via a phone call from shadowy officials in London) to release Smith from custody in the Eighties, after child porn was found in his car boot.

Meanwhile, policemen in London have revealed they were repeatedly told, by unnamed superiors (also believed to be Special Branch), to release the 23 stone MP after he was caught performing sex acts with young boys in public toilets in St James’s Park.

Don Hale, who is now 61, was in 2001 voted Journalist of the Year by What The Papers Say — an award normally reserved for reporters from the national media — for a brilliant campaign as editor of the Matlock Mercury in which he helped clear the name of a man who had wrongly been jailed for more than 20 years for a murder he did not commit.

He knows only too well how deep the tentacles of Smith and fellow paedophiles extended into the Establishment of the time.

A few years later, he was contacted by reporters from the News Of The World, who had somehow learned of Castle’s paedophile dossier and wanted to talk to him about it.

Soon after meeting them, Cyril Smith turned up unannounced in his office, claiming he ‘just happened to be in the area, ’ says Hale.

‘But the real reason was all too apparent: he had heard about the reappearance of the paedophile story and wanted to make sure that I would not pass on the information I had been given.’

In truth, however, there was no real chance of Castle’s dossier of information becoming public.

The News Of The World was also told to ‘spike’ (not publish) the story, for reasons of national security.

‘Their reporters were leant on just as heavily by Special Branch as I had been,’ says Hale, barely able to suppress his anger.

‘The Press is a key weapon in a just society to expose wrong-doing.

‘But this whole saga shows that, in the case of paedophilia in the Seventies and Eighties, the Establishment had a profoundly warped sense of morality, preferring cover-ups to crime fighting.’

PROCTOR is known as an extreme right-winger, but has weathered many storms over his views and activities in private and public.

Now aged 39, he was brought up by his mother in Scarborough with his brother, Grenville.

He tends to be a loner One Tory MP said last week: ‘He’s always very helpful and gets things done efficiently, but I don’t know anyone who has personal connections with him. He just doesn’t have a close circle of friends in the house. ‘

He first received adverse publicity when, as chairman of York University’s Conservative club in 1969, he invited Enoch Powell to a meeting which was disrupted by students.

It was also at York University that Proctor became friends with Denby, who succeeded him as chairman of the student’s Conservative association. Before Denby became embroiled in police investigations earlier this year he was one of London’s leading shipping lawyers.Denby was hired by Proctor, despite not being a specialist in libel law, to represent him in a libel action against the BBC Panorama programme, Maggie’s Militant Tendency, which linked the MP with extremist organisations. Panorama drew on a leaked, draft report, compiled by the Young Conservatives.

However, Proctor, unlike his fellow MPs Neil Hamilton and Gerald Howarth, withdrew the action without obtaining an apology, costs or damages. He asked for no publicity about the decision.

Proctor has stirred up controversy on education, immigration and race relations. He has said local authorities should suspend grants to students who lacked self-discipline. He has called for non-academic sections of universities to be sold to private enterprise.

After he was first elected as an MP, for Basildon in 1979, his first big move was a motion calling for an immediate end to immigration from the New Commonwealth and Pakistan. Proctor went on to suggest that the Commission for Racial Equality be disbanded and that 50,000 immigrants should be repatriated each year.

He was one of seven Tory MPs who rebelled against legislation allowing parents to exempt children from corporal punishment and was behind a campaign to save the golliwog.

The first public suggestion that Proctor was a homosexual was in 1981 when a friend, Terry Woods, named him in court. Woods said he had lived with Proctor for several years. However, Proctor ‘repudiated’ Woods’ comments ‘as far as they concern me’.

With police inquiring into the latest and most potentially damaging allegations against him, even the widely held belief that he has been a good constituency MP in the mainly white middle-class constituency may not be enough to remove the question mark over his political future.

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News of the World, 1st March 1987

News of the World, 1st March 1987

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Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 8th March 1987

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Daily Express, 14th March 1987

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News of the World, 15th March 1987

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Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 15th March 1987

Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 15th March 1987

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Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 29th March 1987

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News of the World, 19th April 1987

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Sunday Times, 26th April 1987

Solicitor arrested after TV tip-offs

By STEPHEN DAVIS and DAVID CONNETT

PETER Jonathan Denby, the fugitive London solicitor hunted by police for nearly a year, was arrested yesterday after detectives, acting on a tip-off from the BBC programme Crimewatch, staged a dawn raid on a home in Yorkshire.

Denby, a former aide to Enoch Powell and friend of controversial Tory MP Harvey Proctor, was picked up in the town of Richmond, where he had been living under an alias. The 38-year-old solicitor, the nephew of a former president of the Law Society, has been on the run since last June.

Scotland Yard want to question him in connection with an incident in Mayfair. After police stopped a hired car on June 3 last year, they were held at gunpoint by two men with Irish accents. The men then fled in the car, which was believed to have been driven by Denby.

Denby‘s Islington home was later raided by armed detectives and his Jaguar car, found abandoned in Kent, was blown up by bomb squad officers.

The runaway solicitor was arrested in the Westfield district of Richmond, North Yorkshire, at 6am yesterday.

Chief Inspector Frank Stockton, of North Yorkshire police, told The Sunday Times last night that the tip-off followed the Crimewatch UK programme which was broadcast last Thursday.

‘Information was received from a member of the public in Richmond suggesting that one of the individuals shown as being wanted in connection with offences of armed robbery in the Metropolitan Police district may have been resident in the Richmond area,’ he said.

‘An operation was mounted by uniformed and CID officers during which the man shown on the television programme, known as Peter Jonathan Denby, was arrested. ‘

Police said Denby had only been in the area for a few weeks. After his arrest, he was transferred to Vine Street police station, London, whee he was being questioned last night.

During his ten-and-half months on the run, Denby made several calls to Harvey Proctor, the MP for Billericay, Essex.

The pair have been friends since they were involved in right-wing politics together at York University in the late 1960s.

Later, Denby became private secretary to Enoch Powell in the early 1970s and developed a life-long interest in the Loyalist cause.He then went into practice as one of London’s top legal experts in the specialist area of shipping law, but quickly ran into severe financial problems.

He now faces legal bills approaching pounds 500,000. Last year, he was ordered by the High Court to repay to his former clients, the Iranian shipping lines, a bribe of pounds 133,000 which he accepted from Greek shipowners.

His former partners in the firm of Lloyd Denby Neal are suing him for more than pounds 250,000 after dissolving the partnership.

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News of the World, 17th May 1987

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Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 17th May 1987

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Daily Express, 21st May 1987

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Daily Mail, 21st May 1987

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Daily Mirror, 21st May 1987

Daily Mirror, 21st May 1987

Daily Mirror, 21st May 1987

Daily Mirror, 21st May 1987

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The Sun, 21st May 1987

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Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 24th May 1987

Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 24th May 1987

Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 24th May 1987

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Publisher Jew Robert Maxwell father of Jewish paedophile Ghislaine Maxwell – The People, 12th July 1987

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Private Eye, 18th September 1987

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The Times, 2nd March 1993

A TORY minister had his nose broken when he went to the aid of a former MP who was being attacked by two men, a court was told yesterday.

In July last year, Neil Hamilton, a trade minister, and his wife, Christine, were visiting a shirt shop in Richmond, southwest London, owned by Harvey Proctor, who resigned as MP for Billericay in 1987 after being involved in a sex scandal. Isleworth Crown Court, west London, was told that James Coomber and David Parker entered the shop and became abusive, asking Mr Proctor: “Have you any ties for tying up rent boys before you spank them?”

As Mr Proctor tried to usher them out, they began throwing punches. Mr Proctor was punched in the face and had his little finger broken. When Mr Hamilton tried to come to Mr Proctor’s aid he was punched in the face three times and knocked to the ground. He needed surgery for a broken nose.

Brendan Finucane, for the prosecution, said: “Mr Proctor was once a Conservative MP who had rather a coloured life relating to his sexual proclivities and the remarks put to him in this case made it abundantly clear what those were.”

Mr Proctor told the court that he was accustomed to abuse over his homosexuality. “It is all water off a duck’s back,” he said. “We were waiting for them to blow themselves out of abuse and to go away.”

This Independent article from Sunday 30th October 1994 is also worth a read:

SENIOR Tory politicians including Michael Heseltine, President of the Board of Trade, and Lord Archer have invested more than pounds 100,000 in a loss-making shirt shop owned by the disgraced former Tory MP, Harvey Proctor, perusal of the register of members’ interests reveals to the curious inquirer.

The register discloses the fascinating fact that no fewer than 11 current MPs have shareholdings in a little-known clothes retailer, Cottonrose Ltd.

This turns out to be the company behind a quaint shirt shop nestling in a Georgian alley in Richmond upon Thames, one of London’s most elegant suburbs.

Its name is Proctor’s, and inside, among the bright cotton shirts, silk ties and gaudy waistcoats, is one of the more colourful figures of the Tory party’s recent past, Harvey Proctor, who was forced to resign as MP for Billericay in 1987 after being fined pounds 1,450 for acts of gross indecency; he was involved in homosexual spanking sessions with young male prostitutes.

Mr Proctor turned from politics to hosiery and opened his shop in Brewers Lane, off Richmond Green, in 1988 with a pounds 2,000 grant from the Government’s Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and a little help from his friends: a start-up fund of pounds 75,000 was organised by Tristan Garel-Jones MP, the former Tory deputy chief whip and one of the party’s best-known fixers.

Lots of former chums chipped in. Besides multimillionaires such as Lord Archer and Mr Heseltine, they included the present Paymaster-General, David Heathcote-Amory; Mark Lennox-Boyd, a former junior Foreign Office minister; and MPs Sir Nicholas Bonsor (Upminster), Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills) and David Evans (Welwyn Hatfield).

Several MPs who, like Mr Proctor, have suffered public reverses to their political careers also coughed up at least pounds 5,000 each. They included Neil Hamilton, forced to resign as Northern Ireland minister last week after allegations that he was rewarded by Mohamed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods, for helping in his battle with Tiny Rowland; Tim Yeo, the former Environment minister who was forced to resign after news broke of his adultery with Julia Stent, a Hackney Labour councillor, who bore his child; Michael Brown, who resigned as a Tory whip last May after a tabloid newspaper reported his homosexual affairs with a youth and a Ministry of Defence civil servant; and David Ashby, who suffered unwelcome publicity after admitting sleeping with a man but denying having sexual relations with him.

Then there were former MPs who, like Mr Proctor, have lost their seats: they include Sir Neil Thorne, William Benyon and Sir Charles Morrisson. All invested in Cottonrose. All have not done well. For business has not gone smoothly with the company: in the four years to March 1992 it made losses totalling pounds 109,421. Last year Mr Proctor failed to submit accounts for 1993, in breach of the Companies Act.

Asked about it yesterday, amid the gold cufflinks and Tino Cosma accessories, the silks and the satins, Mr Proctor’s response was more of the sackcloth variety. ‘I don’t talk to lying newspapers,’ he said. ‘That is my quote. If you don’t leave my shop I shall call the police.’

Mr Proctor, who invested pounds 20,000 of his own money, opened in a fanfare of publicity. He opened a second shop in Knightsbridge and, for a while, appeared to have a success on his hands. He was elected to the local chamber of commerce. John Major ditched his Marks & Spencer shirts in favour of Mr Proctor’s more elegant wares.

But from the outset the project was a flop. In its first financial year to March 1989 it lost pounds 5,311. Further cash injections were put into the firm by the Tory MPs and other investors in 1990 and 1991. A share issue in 1990 produced an extra pounds 14,000.

In 1991 the investors ploughed in another pounds 10,000. MP Neil Hamilton’s wife, Christine, bought pounds 500-worth of shares. The extra cash injections were to no avail. Losses in 1990, the second trading year, totalled pounds 26,547; in 1991 they climbed to pounds 46,066; and accounts for 1992 showed a loss of pounds 31,497. The position since is not known: Mr Proctor has yet to file accounts for 1993. Under Section 240 of the Companies Act he is obliged to file them within 10 months of the end of the financial year. They should have been lodged at Companies House by last January.

Last night MPs had resigned themselves to losing their investment. Sir Nicholas Bonsor said he feared he would not see his pounds 5,000 again. ‘It was suggested we ought to rally round because he was clearly in great difficulty. We did make an effort at one stage; I had a meeting with other MPs and Harvey Proctor and, I think it was, his brother who was working in it with him. But then it looked as if it wasn’t going to work so I think from that stage we wrote the investment off.’

Mr Heathcote-Amory said: ‘Well, if I got the money back I’d be pleased – I’d rather written it off actually. It (the investment) was a gesture to help him (Mr Proctor). I felt a bit sorry for him. I haven’t seen any accounts for a bit. That is not a complaint, but I’d rather lost interest in the thing. I think I’m braced to lose my equity.’

At least five of the Tory investors are MPs who have also suffered heavy losses on Lloyd’s insurance syndicates.

Mr Heseltine’s personal assistant declined to comment on the losses and Mr Proctor’s failure to lodge accounts, saying only: ‘The President of the Board of Trade would expect this company to be dealt with in the same way as any other. Mr Heseltine is not available at the moment.’

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Sunday Express, 30th July 2000

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The Mirror, 19th July 2014 And today we can also reveal disgraced former Tory MP Harvey Proctor has been named by witnesses in connection with sex parties and faces being questioned by a Government inquiry…At least two alleged witnesses have also named former Tory MP Proctor, 67, as being at parties in statements for the inquiry…. A source close to the inquiry told the Sunday Mirror: “Proctor’s name has repeatedly been mentioned by at least two alleged victims. He is going to be of key interest.”…Approached for comment last week, Proctor, former MP for Basildon and Billericay, said he was unable to comment because of a gagging agreement he claims to have signed years ago. Full article

Could the ‘gagging agreement’ be linked to Proctor’s late decision to plead guilty in 1987, thus preventing further embarrassing details being made public?

Why were the Conservatives so reluctant to deselect or expel Proctor from the party despite the huge amount of negative publicity he was generating in an election year?

And why, following Proctor’s conviction, did a number of high-profile Tories, including former Deputy PM Michael Heseltine, invest over £100,000 of their own money in Cottonrose Ltd., his loss-making shirt shop business?

Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor (pictured) was today formally cleared of child abuse and murder allegations as Scotland Yard’s £3million Operation Midland finally came to an end

Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor was today formally cleared of child abuse and murder allegations as Scotland Yard’s £3million Operation Midland finally came to an end.

For more than a year, Mr Proctor, 69, has strenuously denied historic allegations that he was part of a VIP paedophile ring that murdered three boys.

Mr Proctor is understood to be the last living person under investigation over the allegations of serial murder and abuse which were made against him and other high-profile figures by a solitary witness, and suspected serial fantasist known as ‘Nick’.

Today, the former member for Basildon and Billericay was told that police would be taking no further action against him, and called for a public inquiry into Operation Midland, the probe that was sparked by the allegations.

The decision to clear Mr Proctor is a humiliating climbdown for the Met, which had previously described his accuser’s allegations as ‘credible and true’.

‘I have been advised that the Metropolitan Police Service have informed my solicitors that they intend to take no further action with regard to my involvement with Operation Midland,’ he said.

‘I wish to make a short statement. I will make a longer one on the publication of my book “Credible and True. The Political and Personal Memoir of K. Harvey Proctor” on Tuesday, 29th March 2016.

‘I believe Operation Midland should now be the subject of a truly independent public inquiry.

‘I consider that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Patricia Gallan, Steve Rodhouse and Kenny McDonald should tender their resignations from the Metropolitan Police Service forthwith.’

He also called for Nick and news website ExaroNews, which has run a series of stories on the investigation, to be prosecuted for allegedly ‘seeking to pervert the course of justice’.

He added: ‘I wish to thank my family and friends, my solicitors Raza Sakhi and Nabeel Gatrad of Sakhi Solicitors, Leicester and commend the free, inquisitive and independent minded media, who have all supported me over the last year.’

The decision to clear Mr Proctor was revealed exclusively by the Mail last month.

At lunchtime today, a senior officer updated Mr Proctor’s solicitor on the bungled 15 month investigation, which has seen the former MP interviewed under caution and his home in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, raided by police.

Mr Proctor, who was twice interviewed under caution as part of Operation Midland, consistently denied any wrongdoing, and said he was the victim of a homosexual witch hunt.

As revealed by the Mail last month, Operation Midland, which has involved 27 officers and cost more than £2million, had uncovered no evidence to substantiate claims that senior politicians and defence chiefs had been part of a murderous paedophile ring.

Mr Proctor, pictured in 1987, has strenuously denied allegations that he was part of a VIP paedophile ring that murdered three boys

The decision to clear Mr Proctor (pictured at his shirt shop in 1992) is a humiliating climbdown for the Met, which had previously described his accuser’s allegations as ‘credible and true’

The main witness, who uses the pseudonym Nick, has been discredited as a fantasist and critics have called for him – and anyone who encouraged him to make false allegations – to be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice.

Nick claimed to have witnessed the murder of three boys by a gang including former Prime Minister Edward Heath, the late ex home secretary Leon Brittan and a string of ex-spymasters.

The decision to clear Mr Proctor was revealed exclusively by the Mail last month

He also alleged he was abused by Britain’s most distinguished living soldier, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, 92, whose home was raided in front of his dying wife before he was interviewed under caution.

In January, 10 months after police ransacked his home, Lord Bramall, a former head of the Army, was told he would face no charges but since then Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe has repeatedly refused to apologise to him.

Last month, Sir Bernard was snubbed over a new long-term contract as he tried to justify sending 22 officers to raid Lord Bramall’s home at breakfast time.

The Met chief had originally hoped to receive a three year extension to his current five year deal, but amid the continuing furore over Operation Midland, Theresa May announced he would only get a further 12 months in the job.

The Home Secretary’s decision weakened Sir Bernard’s authority at the Met and led one of his arch critics to brand him a ‘lame-duck’ commissioner who was now effectively on ‘probation’.

Home Office sources believe he will leave later this year. It is believed Mrs May is already giving ‘serious consideration’ to the idea of recruiting his successor from overseas.

The commissioner’s future had been in the balance following the Met’s shambolic child sex investigation into former Armed Forces chief and D-Day veteran Lord Bramall.

In the face of widespread criticism, Sir Bernard launched a fight-back, setting up an ‘independent’ inquiry into his force’s handling of historical sexual allegations against public figures, to be led by retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques.

Nick claimed to have witnessed the murder of three boys by a gang including the late ex home secretary Leon Brittan (left) and a string of ex-spymasters. He also alleged he was abused by Britain’s most distinguished living soldier, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, 92, (right) whose home was raided in front of his dying wife

However, the Met chief sparked a secrecy row by saying only the key findings of the report will be made public.

And friends of Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan claimed the move was a ‘blatant’ attempt to kick the row into the long grass.

Lord Brittan’s widow is said to be deeply unhappy about how the Met has handled Nick’s allegations against her late husband, and separate false rape claims made against him by a suspected fantasist known as Jane. The claims made by Nick relate to the period between 1975 and 1984, when he was aged between seven and 16.

Last month, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (pictured) was snubbed over a new long-term contract as he tried to justify sending 22 officers to raid Lord Bramall’s home

Earlier today, Mr Proctor said deputy Labour leader Tom Watson, fellow Labour MP John Mann and London mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith ‘should hang their heads in shame’, for making ‘self-serving’ comments on claims that a VIP child sex ring ran out of Westminster.

Mr Proctor accused the Met and other police forces of being ‘the leakiest of bodies’ after details of their investigation, including a search of his home, appeared in the media.

The resulting coverage ‘engulfed me and destroyed my life’, he wrote, as he issued a plea to Parliament to ‘redress the imbalance in the law in favour of people alleging sexual abuse’.

Mr Proctor previously revealed he faced allegations of murder, rape and abuse of young boys as part of of a group of men who abused children in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the letter he criticised some of today’s politicians who, he said, have ‘courted press attention and constituency idolatry’ by publicly commenting on the claims.

He wrote: ‘The likes of Tom Watson, John Mann (who described me on the day of my house search as ‘the first of many’) and Zac Goldsmith should hang their heads in shame – I doubt they will do so as by their words they have shown themselves to be the antithesis of their sobriquet in parliamentary terms, ‘honourable’ men.

‘I only hope in their lives they never face the turmoil that their varying degrees of encouragement to fantasists and the police has caused me this past year.’

Scotland Yard is yet to comment on the future of Operation Midland.

‘Operation Midland, and its ineptitude, should be investigated by Parliament and the lessons learnt applied to all cases,’ Mr Proctor wrote, adding: ‘The Met, and other police constabularies, are the ‘leakiest’ of bodies.

‘Currently to pass on such information to the press or third parties is a disciplinary offence; it should be a criminal one.’

He also attacked the police for stating publicly that they thought Nick’s claims were ‘credible and true’ as he called for Parliament to investigate the probe.

However he also called on MPs to support Mr Hogan-Howe to ‘to stand up to the bullying of the child abuse fantasists on the internet’, as well as make internet companies such as Google liable to defamation laws.